Guest Post: Anybody There? The Art of Showing Up

by Nichole Bazemore

Something unusual and pretty exciting happened to me recently.

I stumbled upon an innovative marketing consultant’s website through one of my social networking channels. I resonated with her quirky, no-holds barred writing style and sense of humor. To quote Seth Godin, we were part of the same “tribe.”

So, when I received an email about her free, 30-minute individual marketing coaching session, I pounced on it. I hardly ever respond to these invitations, so my taking the time to reach out to her was huge. Our call was scheduled for 9 PM EST, a bit odd by conventional standards, but because she was in another part of the world where her day is my night, I didn’t worry about it.

I prepared my questions, giddy at the thought of speaking with this woman, and eagerly awaited our 9 PM conference. Then, about 2 minutes before our scheduled call, I got an email that read like this:

“I’ve done so many of these today that our conversation would be good, but it wouldn’t be GREAT. Let me know if you’d like to reschedule.”

Suffice it to say that I was baffled. So baffled, in fact, you know what I did? I didn’t reschedule. Instead I unsubscribed from her mailing list. After all, her track record showed that even though she makes a living showing others how to grow their businesses, she herself doesn’t always show up for prospective clients. Why would I give her the chance to stand me up twice?

Over-reacting, you think? Maybe. But it’s business, not personal, and in business, as in life, 90% of success is about showing up.

Are you as successful as you could be in business? If not, consider how you’re showing up for your prospects and clients. For instance, do you:

• Respond to all emails/phone calls within 24 hours?
• Follow up on all proposals within 24 hours?
• Meet deadlines, sometimes in advance?
• Do little things, like send emails or cards, to commemorate important events in your clients’ lives, like birthdays or anniversaries?
• Thank people who refer business to you?
• Have a preferred vendor program?

The truth is, many small business owners and freelancers perfect their product or service and spend countless hours perfecting their sales pitch. But precious few perfect the art of showing up.

Little things, like responding to emails, meeting deadlines, and thanking those who refer business to you will differentiate you from your competitors faster than your product or service will. Even better, it will keep you top of mind.

I discovered how powerful showing up is recently, when I reached out to a client via email just to say I was available for more work. The client responded – within 24 hours, no less – to say that I’d contacted her at the perfect time. That one email resulted in a $2,000 project, proof that in business, it really does pay to show up.

Nichole Bazemore is a freelance writer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Her company, Simply Stated Solutions, provides marketing materials for coaches, consultants, and small businesses. You can read her blog at http://simplystatedsolutions.com/blogs/.

 

Work is Good

I have kept pretty busy lately, so I haven’t had a chance to post at the same time as I’ve had the energy to do so in a while.  Since that seems to always be the case I’ve decided to just put posting on my daily “To Do” list so that I’ll fit it in somewhere.

I have continued freelancing for the company I’ve been working with for a while.  It doesn’t pay much, but I’m getting experience writing all different types of articles, so that’s a plus.  I’ve also been contracted to write some back story for an educational game, and that actually pays enough to make it worth my effort.  Not that I can be choosy right now since I’m just starting out, but it’s nice to make money too!

We have had about three feet of snow this month, so my yard is unmanageable.  I am so tired of snow.  I want to move, preferably to North Carolina, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.  In the mean time, I’m just glad I don’t have an “outside the house” job.

I will be welcoming a guest blogger in the next day or two, fellow blogger Nichole Bazemore, so you can look forward to that.  She is a copywriter, freelancer and mom and I really like her  blog at Simply Stated Solutions .

 

The Joy of Driving

Image via Wikipedia

My life has just become immensely easier.  My husband just got a company car, so I have a car again.

We’ve shared our car for the last four and a half months.  His company will either pay mileage if you use your own car or, if there are any fleet cars available, give you a company car.  When he started there were no fleet cars available.  We planned to use the mileage payments to finance a “new” car, but couldn’t get a straight answer whether or not he would be getting a company car.  The difficulty was that if we got a car loan using the mileage payments to pay for it and then he got a company car, we would no longer have the funds for the car payments on the car we now wouldn’t need.  So we’ve been in car limbo for a while now, and it has been EXTREMELY inconvenient since he works across the state from where we live.  There has been a lot of adjusting schedules and borrowing my mom’s car just so I could pick kids up or drop them off as needed, and if Peapod didn’t exist we’d never have groceries.

Today, I drove Chris to work and he got his company car.  I have my car back.  I love my car.  Its a Subaru Legacy Outback (same model as in the pic, but silver and gray), and it’s great in the winter so now that I have it back I can actually go places.  Like the grocery store, and the bank.  And the library!  M. has asked to go to the library for weeks, and we never have a car so the answer has had to be no.  Now we can visit again, go to playgroup, get books, etc.  It’s very exciting.

It would be different if we were in a city, but we’re not. We’re in a place where streetlights are a rarity and there is no way to go anywhere if you don’t have a car.  Even the closest places are too far to walk in the winter with a toddler, so we have been getting seriously stir-crazy.  This will be a sanity-saver.

 

Book Review: California Schemin’

California Schemin’ by Kate George is a follow-up to her début novel, Moonlighting in Vermont. The main character of both novels, Bree MacGowan, has a knack for getting herself in trouble.  In the first novel, she finds her boss dead and becomes the prime suspect in the murder investigation.  In California Schemin’ we find Bree in California with her boyfriend Beau.  He is working, she  should be taking a break after all the drama back home.  Instead, she witnesses the body of a woman being thrown off a bridge and into a river.  Since Bree had been taking photos of the area at the time, she becomes a target for the killers who think she may have seen or photographed something incriminating.

So begins an adventure that is at turns anxiety-inducing, and at others very funny.  The characters are well-drawn and interesting.  You like Bree, there are “bad guys” who are definitely unlikable, and there are characters who keep you guessing.  The story is compelling, although not overly complicated, and makes you want to keep reading.  The only reason I didn’t read this  book in a single day is that I received an advanced copy in PDF format and was tied to the computer when I wanted to read it.  It is a quick read, and similar in style to writing by Janet Evanovich.  I very much enjoyed reading it, and can recommend it to anyone looking for a light-weight crime drama.

I actually had not read the first book, but had no trouble catching on to what little I needed to know from the first book.  Even if this is your first experience with Kate George’s writing, you won’t be lost.  I do, however, plan to catch up on what I missed by reading Moonlighting in Vermont as soon as I can.

 

 

Book Review: The Tree Lady

I just finished reading The Tree Lady by Virginia J. Marangell.  I briefly met Mrs. Marangell when she did a book signing/sale at a craft fair in Hamden, CT at a local catholic school.  She is a self-publishing author who has written and published eight books, seven of which she published after she turned 75.

The story is about a group of people who live on the second floor of the Grandmoor, an apartment building that in its heyday was elegant and desirable, but now has descended into squalor and is in a bad section of town.  It takes place over less than a year, and shows how the lives of the residents change as they go from strangers to neighbors to friends.

The book was, for me, a mix.  The story was good, if a bit predictable, and kept me engaged.  It was a very quick read, taking me only a couple of days, which is fast considering I don’t get to read for pleasure as often as I would like.  The editing could have been better, and some of the writing was problematic, mainly in the dialogue of certain younger characters.  Still, the technical problems that did occur didn’t detract from the enjoyability of the story.

I gave my mother one of Mrs. Marangell’s other books, Gianna Mia, for Christmas.  This was her only professionally published book, but she has since regained publishing rights and self-published it too.  I haven’t had a chance to read that one yet, but after reading The Tree Lady I look forward to doing so.

All-in-all, I would say that this book is an enjoyable read.  The writing is a bit simplistic, but the idea is lovely, and I like the idea of supporting self-published writers.  I also have immense respect for a woman in her, by now, 80s who is still publishing and marketing her books in whatever way she is able.  I found that  inspirational.

To purchase a copy of this book, visit Amazon.

 

Freelancing update

I just finished my first freelance project.  It was for 30 travel-related articles on various cities/towns around the world.  It was interesting to learn about all the different places I was assigned, and a little dull at times writing such format-driven articles, but overall it was a good experience.  It was my first real assignment, so I was looking at it more as a learning experience than anything else.  They did pay me, but not much.

I did learn that the amount of time it takes me to research and write an article is longer than I thought it would be, but mostly it was the research that took all the time.   I liked the writing part, but didn’t enjoy the research as much.

Up next:  More book reviews, editing my book and trying to write some new short fiction and/or poetry.

Keep your eyes peeled!

 

Happy New Year! Enjoy your cold.

I’m sick.  Nothing major, just a head cold, but it’s knocking me out.  I am thankful that my husband has been home for the past two days.  We went to my mother’s house for New Year’s Day, and when we got home he took over with the kids so I could go to bed to sleep or at least rest.  Sunday, I got up for the first part of the day to keep an eye on things while he ran errands, and once he got home I came back to bed.  If he hadn’t been here and willing to take over, I’d have been chasing a toddler around and breaking up fights between the ten-year-old and the teenager.  Nobody would really be having any fun because I was too sick to go anywhere or do anything fun, so they would all have been bored and driving each other nuts.  As it is, Chris kept them busy, and they came up to visit me once in a while one at a time so they weren’t in each others’ hair as much.

Today I’m working on taking down all my Christmas decorations and cleaning up a little.  I feel almost better.

I’m also working on a story from a writing prompt that I liked.  If it goes anywhere, I might post it here.  We’ll see.

 

Movie Review: Julie & Julia

Cover of Julie & Julia

A couple of nights ago I finally got around to watching “Julie & Julia.”  I had wanted to see this movie since it came out in theaters, but my life does not lend itself to actually going to the movies very often.  I didn’t get to the theater before it was gone, and even after its release on DVD there was always something else to see–kids movies, movies that both my husband and I wanted to see–so I didn’t get to see it until I DVR’d it from one of the movie channels.  Even then, we’ve had it for a month or two and I didn’t get around to watching it until one night this week when my husband was working late.

I love this movie.  I know that I should maybe hedge if this is a review and describe the movie first and talk about the character portrayals and blah, blah, blah.  And I will get to that, don’t worry.  But I want to say first that I love this movie because, for one, this will not necessarily be an unbiased description, and two, if you absolutely hated this movie feel free to just stop reading here and move on (or wait for) the next post.  Read some of my older posts, visit another blog, whatever.  I recommend Wil Wheaton‘s blog at http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/ because he’s funny and everyone should know him as more than just “that guy that played Wesley Crusher.”

Julie & Julia, for those of you who haven’t already seen it, is actually two stories in one.  It follows the life of Julia Child from when she and her husband first moved to Paris up until her first cookbook gets published.  At the same time, it is about a woman named Julie who hates her job and her snippy, bitchy friends who do more “important” work, and has just moved to New Jersey with her husband.  She decides, with the advice of her husband and his help, to start a blog.  She loves to cook, and is a great admirer of Julia Child, so she plans to blog about her journey through Julia’s cookbook over the course of a year.  That is, she’ll cook every recipe in the book in 365 days, and blog about it.

Meryl Streep plays Julia Child so brilliantly that after that first moment of “look how much they made her look like Julia Child!” I completely forgot that it wasn’t Julia through the rest of the movie.  Streep had her voice and mannerisms down and just did an amazing job.

Amy Adams, who I’ve always liked, played Julie and she too completely became her character.  I’ve never seen the real Julie interviewed or on TV at all, so I can’t say that Adams portrayal of her was just like the real person.  What I can say is that at no point in the movie was she “Amy Adams” to me, just Julie.

Good writing can also be credited for part of those performances.  There was no point in the movie which brought me out of it by a line or a reaction that just didn’t seem right.  Sometimes, even in the best movies, there is that one line of dialogue, something small but important that just is off and makes you think that the character wouldn’t really have said that.  It is something that just pulls you out for one second and makes you aware of the fact that this is just a movie you’re watching.  With Julie & Julia, I spent the entire movie in that wonderful place where you feel that you’re watching a part of someone’s life unfold in front of you and you just become absorbed in it.

Beyond just being good entertainment, this movie was very inspiring.  When I finished watching it, I wanted to learn to cook better, I wanted to blog more often, I wanted to do SOMETHING that would continue to give me a creative outlet.  What I liked the most, though, is that the Julie at the start of the movie was me.  I worked in a job I hated (I have since been “let go”).  I have a book that hasn’t been published (or edited, at this point, but I’m working on that part).  I have a need for something more in my life, something that is mine.  That’s what this blog is for me.  It’s mine, to do with whatever I choose.

And the fact that Julie’s blog let to bigger and greater things for her?  That’s pretty inspiring too.  We can’t all be Perez Hilton, but what we do can lead us somewhere.  Eventually, there’s a chance that we, as bloggers, aren’t just talking to ourselves.

 

The obligatory New Years post

Today is the start of so many things.  It is, of course, the start of a new year.  A new year always represents a clean slate to me, as it does to most people.  There are things I want to start doing and things I want to stop doing.  I’m not really into New Year’s resolutions, but I do like setting goals for myself.  I know some would say I’m splitting hairs between “resolutions” and “goals” but to me resolutions are just things people say and then don’t follow through on, whereas goals are something you strive to do and not just forget about them.  I feel like if I don’t have a goal to reach for, I don’t reach at all.  Meeting my goals is another story.  I’m not very good, or at least haven’t been in the past, at follow through.  I feel as though that might have changed with NaNoWriMo.  I’d like to think I have turned over a new leaf after writing 50,000 words in one month.  So here are some of the things I’m aiming for this year:

January:      Write at least 750 words per day on 750words.com.  I’ve committed to their monthly challenge, and I don’t want to miss a day.  No matter what.
Keep my sink shining.  Don’t allow dishes to pile up, even ones that need to be hand washed.  Keep it clear and clean so that it looks nice and is readily available when needed.  There’s nothing more annoying than having to clean the sink before I can begin to cook dinner, and it’s no one’s fault but my own when I come right down to it.

Ongoing:      First edit of NaNo novel.
Clean and pack house for our eventual move (once the house sells)
Potty train M.
Continue building my body of freelance work.
Start budgeting and sticking to it.

That’s really all I can think of, at the moment, for goals I want to meet.  Once January is over, I’ll set a new goal.  Maybe it will be the same one, maybe a different one, but I think it’s important to have something to aim at.

There are also a number of things that I’d like to do, but they aren’t necessarily on my goals list yet.  Maybe later in the year they will be, but for now they’re on the “want” list, not the “have to do” list.  I would like to take a writing class (online of course) or a workshop.  I would like to get my novel ready for publication and start querying agents, if I decide it’s good enough to be worth the effort.  I’d like to eat healthier and maybe even exercise.  I wouldn’t mind losing about 5 lbs, but really what I need is to tone up what I have.  I could come up with more, but why overwhelm myself so early in the year?

Another thing I’m trying to do is be reasonable.  I’m setting two or three monthly goals and that’s it.  Anything I can’t do in a month, I’m keeping on my ongoing goals list.  If I finish one of those in a month, great.  If I don’t, it will either stay on the ongoing list, or move to the monthly list if it seems near enough to completion that moving it is the next logical step.

Every year, I say I would like to be more organized and every year, well, I’m not.  At least not in any lasting way.  I get one area of my life or my house under control, but when I move on to the next thing, the first thing falls apart.  I’m not so good at juggling.  Much as I’d like to think of myself as a multi-tasker, what I really am is easily distracted.  It’s not so much that I’m keeping a bunch of things going, it’s more that I’m starting something, moving on to something else, then something else, and then remembering that I was working on the first thing and I try to go back to that.  It’s really not an effective way of getting anything done at all.  I’m trying to change my approach this year, and I’m hoping that will change the outcome.

What are your goals for 2011?